Tag Archives: Feliciano

Yes, the New York Mets threw away another Matt Harvey start, but in fairness, the Wonder Pitcher also threw away Sunday’s game in San Diego.

HARVEY: “Missed it by that much.” (Getty)

Harvey has 12 no-decisions and overall the Mets are 13-12 when he starts. Those are telling stats of both parties. For the Mets, again ten games below .500, they are equal opportunity when it comes to disappointing their starters.

Harvey, meanwhile, and he’s the first to admit it, must do more of the little things, and not just pitch longer than the six he did Sunday. Harvey, who has made 35 career starts, desires himself to be a great pitcher, and others have the same projection.

That means not hit a batter with an average barely over the Mendoza Line and field a chopper off the mound.

Harvey gave Sunday’s no-decision and Mets’ defeat a typical “that’s baseball,’’ shrug, but you know he’s steamed because he understands that loss was on him as much as it was on the offense and Pedro Feliciano.

The Mets scored four runs and Harvey has a 2.25 ERA and gave up only two runs. Do the math. The bare numbers point to Feliciano, who gave up a game-winning homer to Will Venable. However, a walk-off game is much more than the play that ended it.

Truly great pitchers don’t hit the .208-hitting Logan Forsythe to open the fifth, and later that inning not come up with Venable’s chopper that drove him home. The chopper would have been the second out and not made Alexi Amarista’s sacrifice fly possible.

Had Harvey made those plays, he would have gotten out of the inning scoreless and picked up his tenth win. That’s probably all he thought about on the flight to Minnesota.

The headline is Venable’s homer, but walk-off games contain numerous plays earlier that mean the difference. The two plays Harvey did not make are similar to those not made by his teammates in his four losses, but more importantly, in the 12 team losses in which he started.

How many plays in those games did Harvey not make, by either giving up a walk, not closing out a hitter or inning, or failing to put down a sacrifice? It’s tight as the Mets lost 11 of those games by a combined 18 runs. There is plenty of responsibility to go around, by Harvey and his teammates. One less bad pitch; one more hit.

Great teams, and great players, make the plays, and “great’’ can’t be applied to, either Harvey or the Mets. Not now, anyway.

This has been a scintillating, yet frustrating season for Harvey, as he sees the greatness that is just beyond his grasp, much like Venable’s chop.

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One of the Mets’ most interesting off-season decisions will be what to do with Pedro Feliciano. The departure of Hisanori Takahashi doesn’t necessarily mean bringing back Feliciano is a formality.

FELICIANO: Not a given he'll be back.

Willie Randolph and Jerry Manuel wore down Feliciano, pushing the envelope with him against right-handed hitters over the past three years. Feliciano led the league in appearances for three straight seasons with 86, 88 and 92 in 2008, 2009 and last year, respectively.

“The Mets over used him because they didn’t really have any other better options against right-handed hitters,” one scout said. “There were signs he was wearing down. He’d be better off strictly against lefties.”

He’ll be 35 in 2011 and if he doesn’t have more of a refined role, there are concerns he could wear down. In three more innings pitched last season than in 2009, Feliciano’s ERA rose by a third of a run, and he gave up 15 more hits and 12 more walks.

Feliciano, as much as he wanted an expanded role, proved vulnerable against right-handed hitters with a .336 average against compared to .264 from the previous year.

Feliciano’s pre-All-Star ERA was 2.34, but his post-All-Star ERA was 4.50, including 5.23 in July and 6.75 in August when the season slipped away from the Mets.

The shelf life of a reliever is short to begin with, and considering his age and that there are breakdown signs already, don’t be surprised if the Mets cut him loose and looked for a younger, cheaper arm elsewhere.

Jason Bay was placed on the disabled list and Jesus Feliciano was recalled from Triple-A Buffalo. As the days passed with no improvement in his concussion symptoms it was a no-brainer Bay would go on the DL.

The Mets played this one conservatively from the outset, beginning when Bay complained of headaches on the flight back from the West Coast last Sunday, two days after running into a wall at Dodger Stadium. The Mets took a lot of heat, and justifiably so, for their handling of Ryan Church’s concussion in 2008.